Stanford University, Spring 2010habits.stanford.edu

SP&F: Sun Protection & Forecast

By Loreanne Garcia & Shuqiao Song

Exploring how mobile technology can be used as a tool for health habit formation

Meet Anna!She’s a student at Stanford University. She’s super busy all the time and is always going to and from classes/meetings according to the schedule on her smart phone.

User Profile: College aged female.Lives on Stanford campus. (For beta test)Has a phone w/picture text capabilities.Has and wants to use lotion w/SPF.

Like most students here, she LOVES the sunny California weather, but she worries that she will get sunburned…Anna always forgets to put on sunscreen in the morning.

Potential user is motivated, habit behavior is relatively simple to do, but no triggers for behavior.

One day, Anna’s friend is telling their lunch group about a new service she is creating called SP&F (Sun Protection & Forecast) that will help to remind people to put on sunscreen by sending them picture texts as morning reminders along with the forecast for the day. She wants to launch a 10 day sunscreen wearing challenge to test if this will actually help people develop the habit.

Anna and 7 of her friends are intrigued by the challenge and decide to sign up

Later that night, Ana gets an email message from SP&F explaining how the service works.

The email suggests that she (acquire and) put her moisturizer w/SPF somewhere visible. So, Anna digs it out of the bathroom drawer and sets it on her table; then she goes to bed.

This first email sets up a hot trigger (the moisturizer w/SPF) in the user’s environment (someplace visible). “A hot trigger is something that a user can take action on” (BJ Fogg). This initial step is the “Smallest Behavior That Matters” in breaking down the habit behavior and making it simple to do.

Anna wakes up early to her cell phone alarm. At 8:30AM she hears a beep and checks her phone.

She’s excited that there’s a message from SP&F because now she knows the forecast for the day!  She follows the reminder to place her phone with the reminder next to her sunscreen bottle before going to the bathroom.

The MMS message from SP&F serves as a signal trigger to put on sunscreen, but also triggers the behavior of putting the phone by the sunscreen.

Anna goes through her regular morning routine : brushing her teeth, shower, breakfast, etc.

As she’s getting ready to go, Anna remembers that she needs her phone…Seeing her phone next to the sunscreen, she remembers the SP&F reminder and puts on some of the sunscreen quickly.

New habits will be easier to develop if you tie the new behavior in with an existing cycle behavior. The insight for our user group: a useful existing behavior is grabbing your phone before you leave the door every morning.

Putting the MMS notification on your phone (signal trigger) next to the moisturizer w/SPF (hot trigger) will enable the user to perform the behavior.

She is happy because her skin is protected and now she is ready for the sunny day! She heads out the door for her morning class.

Over next few days…

SP&F sends Anna and her friends MMS reminders at random

After the 10 days, Anna and her friends get to see the results of the sunscreen wearing challenge!

User 1

User 2

User 3

User 4

User 5

User 6

User 7

Ana

0%

0%

60%

70%

70%

100%

100%

100%

SP&F Effectiveness per User

Wow, Anna and two of her friends managed to wear sunscreen all 10 days with the help of SP&F!A few others put it on some of the days, but didn’t see the value in wearing SPF on rainy days.

User 1User 2User 3User 4User 5User 6User 7

Ana

0%0%

60%70%70%

100%100%100%

SP&F Effectiveness per User

Two of her friends flaked on the challenge... and refused to wear sunscreen any of the days.One of them complained that she hated her SPF product. Another said that she didn’t wear any because she has oily skin.

For these two users, they were motivated to help a friend. But when it came down to it they were not already sufficiently motivated to perform the behavior and/or it was still not “simple enough to do” for other reasons.

User 1User 2User 3User 4User 5User 6User 7

Ana

0%0%

60%70%70%

100%100%100%

SP&F Effectiveness per User

The SP&F team was proud because the challenge had an 83% effectiveness (not including dropouts)

Main Conclusions:1. The three behavior change

factors must be in place in order to create a new habit (motivation, simplicity and triggers)

2. Users choice to use sunscreen was influenced by the weather (100% usage on almost all sunny days)

83%!